Palin's Religion: What's Scary, What's Not?

I'm just so sick of hearing about Sarah Palin. I was getting ready for work this morning and flipped on GMA right at 7:00 am (c), and they led with (1) a story about Palin's triumphant return to Alaska, and then (2) Obama's reaction to the "Swiftboat politics" of "lipstick gate." (or is it "piggate") Poor John McCain. He's somewhere in the background repeating that famous line from Monty Python's Holy Grail:

"I'm not dead yet."

The fact that this obviously wacky woman has created such a stir and has upset the polls to such a degree only proves that America is full of wacky fundamentalists.

Well, there's another theory I'd like to float, too. Take another woman with the same background, the same religious beliefs, the same political ties as Palin, but she looks like Janet Reno (no offense, Ms. Reno). Think she creates this kind of celebrity splash? Nope. The nation would give that woman at the best a sound thrashing, at the worst a long, collective yawn.

I seriously think that the next step our nation will take casting us even deeper into idiocracy will be to elect Angelina Jolie president and Brad Pitt VP.

Thank you for conceding what many progressive sorts wouldn't: that Palin's comment on the war was not a pronouncement that it's God's will.
The comment on the gasline wasn't very artful, but I'm not convinced that it declares or assumes the pipeline is God's Will. Bear in mind that it was extemporaneous to an Assemblies of God group, too. Isn't a Christian elected official permitted to speak more of spiritual matters and aspirations in Church than would be seemly in office?
The quote on people's hears being right with God is, I believe, wrested from context. I'm not keeping score very well, but my recollection of the whole quote was more along the lines of politics being ultimately less important than spiritual matters. Where she said it would be important to know, too. Kinda like real estate, only it's "context, context, context" instead of "location, location, location."
My perspective in all this is that of a former evangelical, now Eastern Orthodox, who is well aware that an evangelical theocracy would mean iconoclasm and the indoctrination of my grandchildren in something like the "Protestant hegemony" of public schools in the 50s raised to the Nth degree. I just don't think there's really much taste for theocracy among evangelicals, or that those fragmented folks, whose "unity" is skin deep at best, could pull it off if they wanted to.

I'm with Warren. It made Dan Quayle look like a smooth talking persuader. And a man of reason.

But it is true that a lot of the reporting about her religious beliefs seems like it doesn't know where to start. A lot of the reports/reporters don't separate the language that many faithful people might use (or at least recognize) from the things that we wouldn't.

It's as if she gets slammed for having the temerity to be faithful, when the real issue as I see it is that she has the temerity to be faithful so superficially -- to invoke religious language on behalf of a political agenda, and then claim that her politics flow from her religious commitments.

I'm not convinced.